If you can afford private education but remain in the state sector cont.

[happygardening]

Thought I repost the OP although the debate has moved on a little .
It's going to be hard to avoid this becoming another state v private thread, but what I'm interested in is a slightly different take on that debate. It's not "which is better?" but "if you think state school is better even though you could afford private education, then why is that?"

The question is based on the assumptions that the DC in question is/are reasonably bright (so might benefit academically from academically selective education), that the state school is non-selective (as most people don't have access to grammar schools), and that you hope for your DC to go to a good university (to make the £££££ fees worthwhile!)

I've been mulling this over ever since I heard some maths professor from Cambridge talking on the radio about the age-old private v state inequality of Oxbridge admissions. He was all for improving access for state school applicants but said that the simple fact was that for maths, even the best state schools generally teach only to the A-level syllabus, whereas the best private schools take their maths/further maths A-level candidates well beyond the syllabus and so the state school applicants are at a huge disadvantage - they simply don't have the starting level of knowledge required for the course.

This made me wonder: with this sort of unequal playing field, if you have the choice of private education, what reasons might you have not to take it?

Would be interested to hear from those who've made this choice - how it's working out, or if your DC have finished school now, how did it work out? Did they go to good universities/get good jobs, etc? On the other side of things, if you paid for private schooling but now regret it, why?

My DC go to a state school by the way.

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Frieda what I said was that on the stats a 6 or 7A applicant from a high performing school such as Habs (which you happened to single out above) would be unlikely to get an offer. That's clearly the case, statistically. If you look at the BMAT performance graph almost all offerees had excellent BMAT results. The 'borderzone' where the panel looks more carefully at the available info on an individual candidate comes into play for serious mitigating circumstances, either academic or non-academic. So, it's not for a case where a bunny has died, nor for a Habs boy or girl who might display some extraordinary other talent. You're reading the process wrong. At the shortlisting stage the process is very numerical. At the interview stage other stuff can come into play, but if you don't get an interview you won't get an offer. Thus, statistically, a Habs applicant with 6 or 7A out of 10 exams taken is, in the absence of serious mitigating circumstances and even with a strong BMAT, unlikely to get an offer. That's not dangerous, it's how it is! The Pre-Clinical team can clarify that by e-mail if you wish.

Actually they'd phrase it significantly less bluntly since their job is to encourage applications, not deter.

"Actually they'd phrase it significantly less bluntly since their job is to encourage applications, not deter."

Absolutely, and that is also the reason why applicants are not under any pressure to make a hasty decision to turn down an offer if they are not 100% certain that they will take it up.

I was at a party this weekend and chatting to the father of a boy who is in DD's class at school. This father is a Professor at Imperial, having previously been at a US university and he is also teaches in France. He was musing at the way French universities and grandes écoles are not responding to the very aggressive recruitment tactics of US universities whereas British universities are responding, and actively competing to retain the best students in the UK. And that, of course, includes selling tactics.

On looking at the page more closely I see that these are the new stats for 2013 entry, just gone up.

Remember that when GCSEs are contextualised, scores go down as well as up. Thus DS's 12A out of 12 exams taken became less than 100%, as he took the exams at a high performing school. It's got nothing to do with how he performed in relation to the rest of his cohort, his adjusted score was down. In the same way a Habs applicant with 6A out of 10 wouldn't score 0.6.

Also, looking (squinting) at the numbersof applicants offered a place with 0.6 there are what - maybe three, maybe four? Those are highly unlikely to be applicants from a high performing independent or grammar Frieda!

Lastly, if you look at the correlation between A*s and offers, it's significantly stronger than the correlation between BMAT performance and offers.

So while I know that you want to believe that a Habs type applicant on 6 or 7A* is in with a shout, the reality of the process and statistics simply don't bear this out.

Of course there's no pressure, overt or otherwise, to students who are genuinely in two minds as to whether or not to take an offer up. The last thing the universities want is for offerees to come and then drop out.

I am very pleased that none of my kids want to be doctors.

Yellowtip - you say "So while I know that you want to believe that a Habs type applicant on 6 or 7A* is in with a shout, the reality of the process and statistics simply don't bear this out."

Actually the stats DO bear that out. They show that Oxford admitted students with fewer than 7 A* grades to medicine. There is no way of knowing which school they came from, especially as they make it clear that 40 students who may have been rejected move to the shortlisted group, due to 'other' factors which may or may not be academic.

My husband is a maths graduate and he's appalled at your grasp of statistics. But he's alumnus Bristol, not Oxford, so perhaps he' missing something.

If most have all A then surely it's pretty straightforward to say if you don't have all A then you don't have much of a chance?

Some people do tactical applications. I think one of mine went to Bristol doing subject X because that was easier to get in than subject Y or she just liked the 5 hours of lectures a week may be ... laughing as I type.
..oh and in a subject state schools don't do on the whole so less competition there too. My brother went to a college which had been all girls (Cambridge medicine) and I bet that was easier to get into than the more popular colleges although the system will be different these days.

The main thing is children have lots of options and don't have their hopes pinned on one thing as in life you can make the best of all sorts of situations and although it's good to aim high or at what you want it does not hugely matter if you move from plan A to plan B.

I wonder how easy it is to qualify as a medic in say Bulgaria (if you pay the right bribes) and then presumably you are allowed to work in the UK under EU rules? Is that another route or Slovakia?

Bulgarian is quite a hard language to learn and there aren't many language schools offering it as an option. It's also surprisingly difficult to read medicine anywhere if you have non country standard qualifications.

I have a friend who was unable to make the grades for entry to a UK medical school many years ago, was accepted by a Czech med school and is now back working in the UK as a GP, so it is possible to qualify in the EC and then work here. All her education until Czech med school had been UK-based. She never had to learn Czech as English was spoken at the Czech med school. Interesting!

I much preferred it back in the day when they gave offers because they were interested in what you were doing, even if destined to get 3 E grades. Oxbridgers are so frequently deathly dull nowadays.

I suppose the real question should be, do you think the brightest children get the best GCSE results?

There is definitely a premium on being a nerd these days when looking for a highly-rated UG degree place.

Really Bonsoir? What evidence do you have for that? I don't breed nerds myself and so far my own non nerds have all done fine vis a vis highly rated UG degree places. As have their ultra non nerdy friends.

Xenia you talk so much sense. It takes a legal brain to cut to the chase, since clearly Bristol Maths grads can't grasp it: if most (in fact the vast majority) have all As then those who don't, don't have much of a chance. Absolutely correct, especially since the correlation between A grades and offers is particularly strong, as it is, on the published evidence. And particularly if these lower performers come from high performing schools where their raw A* scores are marked down. Honestly, it doesn't take the brains of an archbishop to work that out (though it does appear to tax the brain of a Bristol mathematician).

I'm sorry if you feel your fees are wasted Frieda since I strongly suspect you are the mum of a Habs boy or girl holding 6 or 7A* who would have wanted or wants to apply to Oxford. But there really is no point deluding yourself.

The extras invited to interview are invited either because they are seriously close to the cut off score and have brilliant other qualities or attractions which make them stand out (I use the term brilliant advisedly). Or because they have major mitigating circumstances (I use the term major advisedly). These types won't get an interview on 6A* from Habs simply because they're captain of the U15/ 11 or Grade 8 on the flute or because their guinea pig died in a terrorist attack moments before the start of their Chemistry AS. Honestly, get real. It's much better for DC if their parents get real.

Mordion we've spent Christmas saying who would do Medicine? That that way lies madness. I'm so glad no-one other than DS1 looks that way inclined.

There has never been anything wrong with being a nerd. It's a tad annoying at the moment that many 'cool' people are pretending to be nerds but this too shall pass.

There was a long thread b4 Christmas about how, according to some report, Oxbridge admissions was dis proportionately biased in favour of selective Indies schools like Habs.

We can go round and round, trying to outdo each other with our statistical analysis credentials, but the said report says it all.

Yellowtip - from talking to people on both sides of the admissions business (schools and universities) where applicants are applying to/from multiple countries. The UK system, at the top end, is currently favouring (and therefore attracting) nerds by reducing emphasis on rounded personalities and extra-curricular activities and focusing on exam results.

I think that you are right about mitigating circumstances needing to be seriously major, Yellowtip. The father of a boy we know was murdered in cold blood in his own home at Christmas time in this boy's penultimate school year. Boy found father at midnight dead in the house when he got in from a party, and months of sleepless nights and anguish followed. No British university thought they were mitigating circumstances (and said boy is now at a stellar student at a non-RG university...).

I certainly think it's worth thinking laterally - it if someone wants to go to X institution, but may not have the grades so they do a different subject there which is easier to get into or study their medicine in the EU but abroad if they cannot get in in the UK, but don't give up.

Focusing on exam results is not necessarily wrong if you want to be fair in admissions as the broader activities tests tend to favour more privileged children. However we certainly need doctors with good communications skills and there always has been and still is some of them who don't have those.

The bigger question is whether the nerd-type is going to be the value-creating business person of tomorrow. Universities need, among many other things, to be breeding grounds of creativity and entrepreneurship.

TotallyBS the statistics I refer to are very condensed and their import is incontrovertible, sorry. These stats in these longer reports are well known for needing close analysis to divine the truth. Not the same thing at all. Have you looked at the ones I'm referring to? They're very specific and about Oxford Medicine only. Very easy to read, unless possibly you too are hampered by being a Maths grad from Bristol :)

Well Bonsoir I'm delighted to say that the overwhelming majority of the many current or recent Oxford undergraduates that I know are hugely entertaining and creative and though most of them work hard they play and perform and socialise very hard too. Of course there are some obviously nerdy types too - there are larger clusters in some subjects more than others -but that's just part of a healthy mix.

While I am glad that you personally are so optimistic about the graduates you know, Yellowtip, unfortunately universities are more pessimistic about the situation.

Most of my so called nerdy friends from my youth are now being very creative and successful (on a world wide stage). In fact I'm about the only one who went on to a normal job. People who diss nerds just display their ignorance, to be honest. And if you want to talk about well rounded personalities - nerd enthusiasms are usually much more interesting than those of the hair and makeup mob (whose interests tend to be, in no particular order, hair makeup and the X factor).

Bonsoir, in my profession we are very concerned about the quality of graduates who are coming in to the profession and how we can mould them into what we need. We tend to find those who are dismissed by others as nerds are in fact rather more useful than those who dismiss nerds out of hand. But each to his own.